“See, that’s what my father always says when he wants to know what a person does for a living.”
“Sure, sure,” he laughed. Gazing around as if to make sure no one heard but me, even though I couldn’t see anyone paying any attention to us—the driver in particular had no time to eye us in the rearview mirror, Minnesota crawling with traffic in comparison with North Dakota—he lowered his voice as if letting me in on a secret. “I sell headbolt heaters, the Minnesota key chain. Bet you don’t know what those are.”
I thrust out my hand so quickly to take the bet he batted his eyes in surprise. “You take a bolt out of the engine block and stick the headbolt thinger in there and plug it in all night and you can start your car when it’s colder than a brass monkey’s balls,” I couldn’t help showing off and getting in some cussing practice.
“You’re something else, aren’t you.” He tugged at his tie as he appraised me. “Where’ve you been anyway, donkey school?”
Mystified, I furrowed a look at him.
“You know, where they teach you to be a wiseass?” He nudged me, smiling like a good fellow to show he was just kidding.
“Oh man, that’s a good one,” I exclaimed, wishing I had it in the autograph book. If only the sleeping Indian had been this talkative! Taken with the back-and-forth, I said in the spirit of things, “I skipped wiseass school, see, for a dude ranch. Out west.”
“That so?” Still with a sort of a grin, he prodded: “Saddled up Old Paint, did you, to go with that cowboy shirt I saw?”
The idea seemed to entertain him, so I expanded it for him. “Sure thing. I won it in the roping contest. That and the jackpot.” I was having so much fun, I threw that in as if it were prize money in a regular rodeo; Gram had been teasing about people thinking I was a bronc rider, but twirling a lasso didn’t seem beyond me. I built it up a touch more: “The other dudes couldn’t build a loop worth diddly-squat, so yeah, I hit the jackpot.” I couldn’t help grinning at the slick double meaning. Carried away even further, I confided, “And there was another prize, too, even better.”
“You don’t say. The grand prize to boot?” he said in a kidding voice, although I could tell he was impressed.
To keep him that way, it was on the tip of my tongue to airily say the prize was nothing less than an arrowhead blacker than anything and older than Columbus. But something made me hold that in, for the time being. Instead I resorted to:
“You pretty close to guessed it. Beaded moccasins.”
“Indian booties?” That had him eyeing me as if to make sure I was on the level. “How are those any big deal?”
“They were made a long time ago for the best Blackfoot fancy-dancer there ever was, that’s how.” I didn’t need to fumble for a name. “Red Chief, he was called.” My enthusiasm built with every detail that flashed to mind. “See, when there was this big powwow about to happen with Indians coming from everywhere, the tribe gathered all its beads on a blanket, and the best moccasin maker chose the prettiest ones and spent day and night sewing the design.” Expert of a kind that I was from donning the soft leather slippers for so many middle-of-the-night calls of nature, I lovingly described their blue and white prancing figures that seemed to lighten a person’s step, like wearing kid gloves on the feet.
“They’re real beauties,” I assured my blinking listener, “and when the guy, Red Chief I mean, put them on for the fancy-dancing contest against all the other tribes, he won everything. And so, after that the moccasins were called ‘big medicine’—that’s Indian for ‘magic,’ see—and nobody else in the tribe could even touch them but that one fancy-dancer.
“When he got old and died, though”—my tone hushed just enough to draw my audience of one in closer—“the tribe was going to sell them to a museum back east, but the dude ranch owner heard about it and traded a bunch of horses to the Blackfeet for them.” For all I knew, this part approached the truth. Admittedly in very roundabout fashion, but the fact was that my grandmother, the sharp-trading fry cook there in the reservation town of Browning, had bargained someone out of the impressive moccasins somehow.
I had to really reach for the next portion, but I got there. “When the dude rancher tried them on, they had shrunk up real bad and didn’t fit him, so he made them the grand prize for the roping contest. They’re just right for me,” I finished modestly.
My seatmate’s jaw kept dropping until I reached the end, then as if coming to, he studied my feet. “I’m surprised you don’t have them on, show them off some.”
“Uh-uh, they’re way too valuable,” I fielded that, “I have to keep them tucked away in my suitcase. I’ll only wear them at home, around the house.”